The Crescent

Day three of blogging about beer in Canada, coinciding with day three of the trip itself. It was an early start that Sunday, to catch the All-Ireland football final at Hurley's Irish pub nearby. It's not a beer specialist by any means, though you can get a few from the O'Hara's range on draught. I picked two from McAuslan, whose St-Ambroise range I covered on Monday.

Griffon Blonde is a sweet and perfumey blonde ale of 5% ABV, devoid of bitterness, other than a mild lemon candy note. It's quite thickly textured which isn't a problem when it's cold from the tap, but this starts making it less enjoyable as it warms.

There was almost the opposite problem with Griffon Rousse, only slightly weaker at 4.5% ABV but horribly watery. There's a vague caramel flavour, exactly as you'd find in a sub-par (ie typical) Irish red, and just a mild roasty spice complexity in the finish. None of it saves it from being incredibly dull, however.

Hurley's is on Crescent Street, the centre of an area awash with bars and restaurants. A couple of doors up there's a branch of Les 3 Brasseurs, a franchise chain of brewpubs in the Francophone world, and one which tends not to make particularly good beer. But it was raining and we didn't want to go far.

The pub itself is pleasant, laid out more as a restaurant, with the brewery hanging dramatically from a mezzanine overlooking the main floor. I chose an oatmeal pale ale, Avoine. It arrived an ugly, murky ochre colour and the lack of brightness spread to the flavour too. Somehow it manages to have a greasy hop-resin character without imparting any hop bitterness or flavour, just a vague greenness of celery and damp grass. I expected more punch, especially at 5.6% ABV, but punch came there none.

Across the table, a glass of 3 Brasseurs Brown started promisingly with a lovely caramel aroma, unfolding in chocolate and ripe banana. Bizarrely, then, the flavour turned out to be acrid and burnt, with none of the promised richness. I do not know how this alchemy was achieved but I do not approve.

L: Bonjour/High; R: Oatmeal Stout

Just as well we had an escape plan. On the far side of Hurley's is a brewpub called Brewtopia. The name is rather euphemistic for a rather dark and shabby multiroom bar, one which doubtless is intended to be lively and crowded but wasn't on this dismal Sunday afternoon. They had a hemp beer on and I went straight for that. Bonjour/High is the name, a dark red colour and served very cold. I found it thin and tasteless, even after it had warmed up a bit. There's crisp roast and light caramel, but nothing resembling hemp flavour. Not much flavour at all, in fact.

The Brutopia Oatmeal Stout wasn't a whole lot better, but it was better. This was another where the aroma makes promises the flavour can't keep, smelling richly tarry with added floral perfume, but dry to the point of acridity on tasting. It's OK when you get used to it, but it never really lives up to that initial promise. Brutopia joins the one-round-then-gone club.

A couple of days later we dined further up Crescent Street at a fairly new beer-themed restaurant called Artisanale. The service was comically bad in a cheery sort of way, though the slowness did mean we got to give the menu a thorough exploration.

Les Trois Mousquetaires is a fairly ubiquitous Quebec microbrewery, its beers coming in smart and distinctive uniformed 75cl bottles in the shops. Artisinale was pouring its Sour Citra and I thought it would work well as an aperitif. It did too: a fresh and clean lime astringency offset by cordial sweetness. The tartness is full-on yet balanced and there's an excellent use of the hop/sourness combination. At 5.5% ABV it's perhaps a little on the strong side, but it rewards sipping rather than chugging, which helps.

Beside it is Downtown Brown from Microbrasserie 4 Origines, about 3km from where we were sitting. This is how you do a brown ale. It was tempting to bring a jug down to 3 Brasseurs to show them. Downtown is a clear garnet colour with a rich chocolate cereal aroma. The texture is beautifully smooth, letting the milk chocolate and milkier coffee notes flow silkily over the palate. A twinge of old-world hop bitterness offers a touch of balance, but mostly this is about the wholesome and filling dark malts. The finish is clean, not allowing the sweetness to build or cloy. In fact, this beer was as aperitif-worthy as mine.

Confusion about what was available led to the next round consisting of three beers. I went with Réal, a double IPA by a local client brewer, Materra. In the middle of the picture there, it's a clear golden amber and though a mere 7.75% ABV is extremely alcoholic tasting, mixing the booze with orange cordial like a teenager. Zest, pith and rind eventually emerge from this mess and redeem it, the end result being quite a simple and tasty DIPA, once you're accustomed to the heat.

The orange-coloured St-Ambroise Abricot was a substitution after the requested Hopfenweisse was out of stock. It turned out to be a poor substitute for anything as it's very obviously a plain wheat ale squirted with apricot extract to make it seem interesting, but it absolutely doesn't work. The syrupy result tastes like jam and jellybeans: simplistic and artificial apricot flavours with no real character of its own. Doubtless there's a market for this sort of thing but it ain't me.

But what's this? A glass of Trois Mousquetaires Hopfenweisse has been miraculously extracted from the long beer lines and presented to the table for free. Aww. This is 6% ABV and quite pale, smelling very much like an ordinary weissbier: bananas and butane. The flavour is surprisingly dry with some booze but not very much hop. I'd class this as just a better class of weiss instead of a whole new style, it being well rounded and smooth yet crisp, with all the orthodox flavours and no gimmicks.

A few nights later saw us a couple of blocks over, dining at Reuben's Steakhouse & Deli, something of a Montréal institution, I gather. The food was very decent. The beer wasn't really up to it, as is so often the case when an industrial brewer gets their claws in. Reuben's Pale Ale is the house beer and I suspect that this is a rebadge of something by Molson Coors as I think I found it somewhere else under a different name. It tastes of syrup and grains, like a dodgy budget lager. Yuck.

The rotating tap was pouring Mad & Noisy, an India Pale Lager by Molson-owned Creemore Springs. Strangely for something so corporate it tasted very rough, all yeast grit and overdone toast. This came with a murky appearance and 5.3% ABV. By way of subtlety there was a touch of coffee grounds and a little light raspberry, but nothing appropriate to the style: no clean lager or bittering hops. I guess the name should have been a clue.

Moving closer to the historic heart of the city (you can fill in your own jibe about what counts as "historic" in North America) we come to BreWsky, a brewpub in the basement of the Bonsecours market building. I opted for the BreWsky Session IPA, a pale yellow job at 4.5% ABV, hazy with a flavour mix consisting of caraway seed and zinc. The latter makes it unpleasantly bitter, and while it's drinkable, it's very unbalanced and lacking in the hop fun that's supposed to make the style worthwhile.

In the squat glass next to it is Trouble #2, allegedly a hazy IPA but really not very hazy. There's almost no aroma and the flavour has little to say beyond a mild lemon and orange juice tang. A yeast bite is probably hiding some of the hop character but I'm sure it's not the only problem here. This one is mediocre at best.

More Montréal pub wanderings tomorrow, in the hope of better beers.